1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an intelligent parking guidance apparatus and method, and more particularly, to an intelligent parking guidance system for providing information regarding parking lots near a destination to a driver in real time to guide the driver to drive his/her vehicle to an empty parking space in a selected parking lot, as well as providing a road guidance service for driver to the driver.                This work was supported by the IT R&D program of MIC. [2006-S-024-01, Development of Telematics Application Service Technology based on USN Infrastructure]        
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional navigation programs provide a road guidance service for guiding a driver to a destination, but do not provide information regarding available parking lots near the destination nor a service for guiding the driver to an empty parking space in a selected parking lot.
Accordingly, drivers have to look for parking lots near their destination in order to park their vehicles. Also, even when the drivers find an appropriate parking lot, they may have to look for a different parking lot if there are no empty parking spaces in the appropriate parking lot.
Conventionally, there is no method in which a driver can acquire information regarding empty parking spaces when his or her vehicle enters a parking lot of a large building, a large department store, a shopping center, a large discount store, a public institution, or the like. Thus, the driver has to direct his or her vehicle relying on hand gestures of parking staff, or has to look for an empty parking space while driving around many floors of the parking lot if no parking staff are present.
Recently, in order to solve such a problem, an unmanned parking management system using a wired/wireless network has been introduced.
However, in the case of the unmanned parking management system using the wired network, if a parking lot is large, installation costs in relation to the parking lot are high and an installation process is very complicated since a vehicle sensor that are installed in each parking space, an indication light, a central processing controller, etc., need to be wired together with each other.
Also, long installation time leads to a long-time limitation in use of the parking lot.
In the case of the conventional unmanned parking management system using the wireless network, a method in which a vehicle sensor and a wireless transceiver are installed at each parking space and the wireless transceiver directly transmits data sensed by the vehicle sensor to the central processing controller, is used.
However, the method in which the wireless transceiver directly transmits data sensed by the vehicle sensor to the central processing controller, needs a high-power wireless transceiver since a wireless transceiver of each parking space must directly perform 1:1 communication with the central processing controller. The use of such a high-power wireless transceiver further increases installation costs and power consumption.